Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, 'I have to be in this movie.'

They were saying, 'Keep this under your hat, but Jack Sparrow's going to die in the second movie.' I went, 'You're kidding me. The fans are going to go berserk.'

What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.

Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I had a total of 38 wigs, for a start. There were prosthetics, too - silicone pieces which go on the skin, which absorb the light. They looked like seven pieces of uncooked veal to start with.

Nobody ever said that growing old would be easy. Just having to hold the newspaper out in your forties and then hair growing out of unusual parts of your body in your fifties. It's tough on the ego.